


Tiny Human Heads

by kalima



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-29
Updated: 2012-01-29
Packaged: 2017-10-30 06:53:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/328981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalima/pseuds/kalima
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor is on a mission to tell everyone he loves that he loves them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tiny Human Heads

There was a party happening in her house, and she opened the back door laughing. The laughter slipped away in a breath and then there was just the smile stuck to her lips like it hadn’t quite caught up with the alarm in her eyes. She was dressed in sapphire blue velvet, very appealing. He could hear the champagne bubbles bursting in the glass in her hand. He took a deep breath. 

“Sarah Jane Smith, I love you.”

Years passed before she thought to close her mouth, and a moment later she downed the champagne in a gulp. A furtive glance over her shoulder through the kitchen and down a corridor to the far away universe where people he didn’t know were laughing and talking about things that had nothing to do with him. He was fairly certain she wouldn’t be inviting him in. He suspected this was a good thing. No questions to answer, or speculation about the nature of their relationship, she wouldn’t have to lie about him. Sarah Jane had never cared for lying. Or liars. She belched softly, looked at him, worried frown forming glacier-like between her brows as she stepped out, closing the door behind her, but not all the way. “I was expecting pizza,” she said.

“I must be a terrible disappointment.”

Swaying from drink, she cast a wary eye at him. “You love me.” 

“Yes.” He smiled a reassuring smile so she wouldn’t think he was mad, _madder_ , but she kept looking at his eyes so he thought maybe the smile hadn’t quite reached them yet. “You needn’t feel obligated to say it back.” 

“Oh. Thanks for that. I love you too. Now, what’s going on?” 

“Nothing. Just thought you should know.” 

She peered around him, looking for someone, something else, some substantial reason for his very real presence in her little garden. “Is Earth being invaded again?”

“No.”

“End of the world, some kind of apocalypse?” 

“No! Look. It’- it’s a sort of New Year’s resolution... thing, I’m trying. ”

“Since when do you—“

“Hush! My resolution is to tell everyone I love that I love them. With actual words.” 

She spent a moment getting her empty champagne glass to sit on top of the fence post. “And you started with me?” Charmed (and drunk) as she was, she knew him too well not to be a little suspicious. 

“I was in the neighborhood.” Hands in his trouser pockets, he scuffed at the garden dirt with the toe of his shoe. “And. Also. There’s a good possibility you’re the only one left, so…” He felt the grin stretch across his face. It kind of hurt. Her eyes, looking at him, suddenly huge, limpid, those hurt too. He looked down. “…yeah…so…”

In the silence that followed, all the tiny sounds of the world went jazz percussive. The plink of laughter. Clinking ice in a glass. Tires on gravel. Bark of a dog. The sound that came out of her and into the beat was a low keening that freaked him right out. “Jesus. Oh my God. They were just kids.” 

Both hands clapped over her mouth trying to keep the sound in. Time was that would have been her trying not to laugh at him. Instead, this breathless sobbing, trying not to disturb the neighbors. 

He started waving his hands about in panic. “No no no no no. Don’t. Please.” He clasped his hands together, begging. “Please don’t. That’s not— I didn’t come here to dump on you. Honest.” He threw his head back and groaned at the night sky. “I really _really_ suck at this. I really came here to tell you I love you. Because you need to – I mean, it’s clearly important for you to know and apparently not evidenced by my actions. And also it’s good for me. To say it. To make it clear in no uncertain terms – “ Deep breath. “Look. The past few days have been bad, I’ll admit. Well, past week, I suppose. Month, tops. And before that there were some bad bad increments of time utterly meaningless to your kind, but that’s all over now, and it’s better, I swear, and I wish I could tell you more because you don’t need to cry for any of it, for _them _. Or me. Could be so much worse, you’ve no idea. And plus side – big tick on the plus side – _you’re still here_ which is the best thing _ever_. So, go back to your party, back to your mates. Please, _please___ , Sarah-Jane, my dearest friend that I love, just go have a beautiful rest of your very long life.”

She stared at him, horror and terrible pity and a sharp little shock he interpreted as betrayal. Her betraying him, not the other way around. And, for a moment, he thought he’d start crying too, and that would be so lame after such a heartfelt speech. She sucked in a snotty breath, and palmed the moisture from her eyes and cheeks. Her voice, when she finally used it, was huskier than usual. “Christ, Doctor. Don’t be such an idiot.”

He blinked. “Gee, Sarah Jane, don’t hold back. Tell me how you really feel.”

She snorted. “If you think I’m going to send you on your way now, you’re a bleeding idiot. Just give me twenty minutes to clear everyone out.”

“You don’t need to do that –“

“Please, shut up. This isn’t tea and sympathy I’m offering. Pizza and wine, if anything. Have a seat on the bench there.” He stared at her, afraid to move, afraid he _had_ come with the ulterior motive of her good graces, and that he really was a selfish prick. She pressed her hand to his chest and gave him a shove. “Have. A. Seat.” Into the kitchen and back out again to thrust money in his hand. “For the pizza.” 

 

“Where’s the dog?” he asked, examining the bits of her life on display in the lounge. His nose was scrunched up, and she noted the freckles more than she had before, the way his brown eyes squinted a little behind the lenses of his glasses. His hair stuck out more on one side than the other. He’d shed his overcoat and tossed it on a chair. It was on the floor now, ut he hadn’t noticed. 

“In the shed, recharging.” She flipped back the lid of one of the boxes. “Do you want meat or veggie?”

“Both! You’ve won awards!” He looked at her, grinning his delight then back to the award in its cheap frame. “Recognition from your peers. You’re all successful and stuff.”

“It was a long time ago.”

“Oh wow! Look at this! Books! You’ve written books!”

He was exclaiming every singe sentence. “Just the two,” she said, modulating her voice carefully in hopes of dialing his down a notch. 

“Two books! That’s amazing.”

“They didn’t sell.”

“Money. Bah, what sort of quality indicator is that for art?”

“The kind that appeals to publishers.”

His fingers brushed along walls, over the bottles and glasses where she’d set up the bar, and dragged across the spines of more books on more bookshelves, paintings, lamps, even over the flames of candles until coming to rest on mantle. “It’s a picture of Harry!” He glanced over his shoulder, terribly earnest. “I’m going to look him up when I leave here, and tell him I love him.”

“Oh…kay. That should be fun.”

“Who’re these people with you?” He indicated another photo. For a second she didn’t know what people he was talking about. She hardly noticed it the picture anymore. “The woman is Naima Dante. And the man is Hollis Blessing.” She peered at it, filled with a sudden wistful longing for those days, her and Hollis tanned nearly as dark as Naima in her natural state, all of them dusty and smiling. “Hollis was my photographer on some pieces I did, and Naima translated for me when we were in Egypt.”

“You’re all so full of passion and adventure here. It just leaps out of the picture.”

“Yes, well, we had a lot of passionate adventures together. Hollis and I were lovers. He left me for Naima. They’ve been married for fifteen years.” 

“Oh,” he said, very obviously searching his brain for the appropriate thing to say. 

“I’m their son’s godmother.”

“Oh. Well, that’s all right then.”

 

“1999,” he said, halfway through the Veggie Extra Cheese, “seventh me steps out of the TARDIS in the middle of a gang fight in Chinatown. Bam! Shot in the heart. Eighth me wakes up in a hospital morgue wearing nothing but a toe tag. Morgue attendant thought I was the second coming of Jesus, poor sod. Don’t think he was a believer before that.” She was laughing, but in horror at the events or delight in the telling, she didn’t know anymore. “Then, let’s see…I kissed a beautiful woman, and saved the universe. Started a trend, apparently. People were always wanting to kiss me after that. You would have liked that body I think.”

“What happened to him? You? That one?”

“Had a good run. Crap ending.” When it became clear he wasn’t going to share more than that, she asked, “And the one before this one?”

His sudden smile dazzled, took her breath, and his eyes were shining so brightly it made her ache. “Rose killed me.” And he told her the story of that instead.

 

“ – it’s connected to their cultural identity!” 

“So was slavery way back when! You’re not a fan of that!”

“I didn’t say I was a fan of infibulation!”

“ _Little girls_ , under the knife in unsanitary conditions—“

“Aargh, I knew I should’ve kept my mouth shut—“

“— and if they don’t die from the surgery, they die when their husbands cut them open for the wedding night. And for what? So men can feel more secure about who’s the daddy? It’s ridiculous. And bloody criminal!” 

“There are worse things in the universe than misguided ritual scarification in the name of religion.” 

“If you say so. You’re the expert on the universe.” 

“That’s me,” he muttered into his glass.

“Well, I can only address the things I’m aware of, here and now, on my little planet. The universe is your purview.”

“I’ve cocked it up recently, so you might want to start looking after some of it yourselves. Just saying.” 

“I thought you saved us all. Again. In the recurring Christmas miracle starring you as Baby Jesus.” 

“What? You can’t even cast me as one of the Wise Men?”

 

“Don’t put that on, I mean it.”

“But it’s a really good song. If you’d just listen—“

“”fraid I’m going to have to put my foot down on this. U2 yes. Coldplay no.”

 

“ _I fell into a burning ring of fire. I fell down down down and the flames got higher—_ “ 

“ _And heeerrrre am I sitting in a tin can, high above the world. Planet earth is blue and there’s nothing I can do. Duh dun duh duh duh duh duh DUN. This is ground control to Major Tom…_ ” 

“ _– and I won’t get any older now that angels wanna wear my red shoes. Red shoes, the angels wanna wear my red shoes, red shoes–“_

They were in the middle of the chorus on the third replay when Mrs. Jarvis from next door called and threatened to send the police round. 

 

“It’s a bit Bridget Jones in Space,” he commented, flipping the page, specs hanging from the tip of his nose.

“I’m sure they would have happily promoted it that way were it not for the fact it was published three years prior to Bridget Jones’s Diary.” 

He turned to the front of the book. “Oh, so it was,” and proceeded to skip back and forth through the text, making hmm noises, and ah, and huh, and oh reallys, until it was all she could do not to snatch it out of his hands and hit him over the head with it. Instead she asked, “How’d you cock it up?”

“Huh?”

“The universe? How do you cock up a universe? I mean you keep alluding to something very big and tragic, but—“ 

“Rose being dead isn’t big enough for you?”

She closed her eyes. “God, I am so sorry, Doctor. I should’ve –”

“She isn’t dead. Neither is Mickey.” 

“You – you shit. Why’d you let me go on believing it?”

“No one’s supposed to know. No one _can_ know.” He shot her a gaze that made it clear he hadn’t trusted her with the information before this point. But the timing of his confession was suspicious and stirred a depth of rage in her she hadn’t even known was there. She could feel it rushing up along her spine about to burst out the top of her head when something in his expression made it go poof. “She’s dead as far as anyone here is concerned and that’s the way it has to remain. I’ll never see her again. Not unless I do something really stupid, stupider than what I’ve already done. I only did _that_ because you told me I should.” This last was muttered under his breath, almost petulantly.

“Don’t tell me you actually did something I told you to?”

“Ha ha. Yes. I said goodbye. It took a feat of engineering I would rather not think about, due to what could have gone wrong, but I did it. That closure thing you were harping on about. I said goodbye. It didn’t make her happy. I think I may have made things worse for her. I’m blaming you at the moment.”

“It usually doesn’t make people happy, Doctor. It merely allows them to move on.”

“Oh. Wish you’d mentioned that part before.”  
“Did you not want her to move on? I mean, if you couldn’t ever be together – “ She was careful not to give added emphasis to any word in that sentence, but then, “Ah, it all becomes clear. The real reason you’ve come here tonight. Not because you said goodbye, but because you didn’t say something else, and now you can’t.”

“That’s not why,” he said quietly. But he didn’t look at her when he said it. His knee began to bounce, fingers drumming on his thigh. Then he got up and started rifling through her DVDs. 

 

They were watching the crew of the Nostromo wake from hypersleep when he put his hand on her knee. 

“What are you doing?”

“Petting your dress. I love velvet. I used to have a velvet jacket.”

“Spend a lot of time petting yourself, did you?”

“Not as much as I would have liked. I hardly ever got to do what I liked.” 

The petting was quite nice, she had to admit; a gentle rhythmic stroking along the nap of the fabric then up again, against the grain in a way that rucked the skirt up a little more with each pass of his hand. Nice in ways she wasn’t prepared to acknowledge quite yet. She picked up his hand and gently dropped it onto his own lap. “Get your own velvet.” 

 

He had one hand over his eyes, fingers spread so he could see what was happening anyway, and her hand clasped tight in his other one, and even though they both knew what was coming because they’d seen it dozens of time already, they both jumped. “Gah!” “Jesus! Oh shit! Shit!” “Ew, ew, ew.” 

She hit him in the chest. “Why did you make me watch this?” 

“This is still the best one bar none! Could we watch Predator next?”

“God, no!” 

“Why have you got all these films about nasty aliens?”

“Why do you like watching them?”

“Right. Who’s up for Bollywood?”

 

The doomed love of Jai and Rhada was making her twitchy, especially since she knew they’d never get it on anyway. “Seriously, though. How do you cock up an entire universe? And why haven’t I noticed?”

“Because you have a tiny human head.”

“Oh. So it’s something too vast for my tiny human head to comprehend, then?”

“Well, Sarah Jane, it is the Universe after all.”

“Perhaps you could explain it to me using very small words that will fit inside my head.”

“No. Stop asking.”

“You know I can’t”  
“Curse you and your pesky girl-reporter instincts,” he said, shaking a fist at her. His other fist poured more wine into his glass then waved the bottle at her by way of a query. She shook her head. He took a drink. “Fine. Like this. First you try to save the universe. Then you try to stitch together the shredded pieces that are left after you’ve _saved_ it using surgical techniques the cosmic equivalent of infibulation. Nothing can get in or out unless it’s got a big knife or a really big head.” He dropped his own head into his hands with a moan. “I used irony quotes. Kill me now.” 

“But what happened? Why did you have to save the universe in the first place?”

“I’m always saving the universe.”

“One planet at a time usually. With the help of a teaspoon, a ball of string, and your big gob.”

“I was younger then. I carried more stuff in my pockets. And things got a lot more complicated,” he paused, gnawing his lower lip with his teeth. Then he sighed. “There was a war. A really big war. The kind of really big that make words like ‘really’ and ‘big’ seem very silly. Ball of string approach charming but ineffectual. Although… I did defeat the Sycorax with a well-aimed Satsuma. Your Prime Minister finished the job by blowing them the hell up. And I don’t want to talk about this anymore. Have you got any biscuits?”

She went to the kitchen, brought back a packet of All Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies from M&S. 

“Ooh, who’s my little crack pusher, then? You are.” He tore open the bag with his teeth. 

“Shouldn’t you talk about it though? I mean, maybe you have PTSD. You probably need counseling.”

“If you knew how really stupid an idea that is you’d be prostrate with embarrassment right now.”

“Have you _ever_ talked about it?”

“I never told anyone before Rose.”

“Oh.”

He sighed, frustrated with the human pettiness, and feeling deeply put out that he had to indulge it. “Look. Told her the same thing I told you. Pretty much. War. Everyone dies, blah, blah blah.” He bit into a cookie and closed his eyes, chewing with orgasmic pleasure. When he opened them again, she had her arms crossed over her chest, mouth pinched. It made her look old. “Anyway. It’s not the same with you.” 

“Right. Got it.” She turned away. He grabbed her arm and tugged her down to sit beside him. 

“I don’t want you to know,” he said, carefully, looking hard into her eyes. He handed her a cookie. “You’ll look at me differently. You’ll think of me differently.”

“How can you say that? And why did none of this matter with her?”

“She didn’t know me already! Don’t you understand? I want to be who I was when you knew me best. Can I be that please? Just for a little while? Eat your cookie and stop picking at my scabs.”

 

“What are you doing?”

He opened one eye, and saw her two eyes looking back. “I believe your people call it snogging. Kissing. Locking lips. Swapping spit. Tongue wrasslin’”

His tongue tasted buttery and chocolate chunky. She’d actually let it in long enough to taste what was on it. “I mean. Why?”

“Do you not want me to?”

“Do you think I want you to?

“ _I _want to.”__

“Again. Why?”

“ If _you_ don’t want me to then you say no.”

“It’s not that I don’t. Exactly. I’m just suspicious of your motives.”

“Er... what motives do you suspect?” 

“You’re using me to escape your troubles. You’re using me because you’re sad and miss someone else. You’re trying to distract me from my pesky girl-reporter tendencies. Or you think you’re doing me a favor. Somehow.”

“Wow. Those are a lot more complicated than my reasons. How about because I always wanted to.”

“Really? Why didn’t you then?”

“You would have run away screaming.”

“So you decide _now_ is the right time? I’m fifty-four for God’s sake! And you look… really young. I mean, _young_ , young. I look like a filthy old lady.”

“You’re fifty-four not ninety-four. Not as if you’re going break a hip falling off of me.”

She pulled back with a startled laugh. “You’re awfully damned sure of yourself. What makes you think I’ll be in a position to fall off of you?”

“Figure you liked to be on top,” he said, and leaned in to kiss her again. 

 

“Oh. Oh. What are you doing there?”

“Yoga,” she said, pressing her thighs tight along his rib cage and rising up slightly. 

“Yoga! Yes! Okay! Don’t be alarmed if I scream at some point.”

 

“Wow,” he laughed, somewhere, down there, in the country between her legs, “You’re so… really…bossy.”

“Well, if you’d take the more subtle hints – “ 

“Don’t get all huffy. Come back. I like it. Spurs to the flanks, cracking that whip.” 

“There’s a joke I could make right now –“ 

“I’ve already made it in my head. Boss me around some more. Go on.”

“Not how the scenario usually works, cowboy.”

“What’s yer pleasure, ma’am?”

“There you go.”

 

“Oh, Sarah, oh no, nonono, what’s the matter?” She squeezed her eyes shut trying to stop the tears sliding down the sides of her face and onto the pillow. “Am I hurting you?” 

She shook her head. 

“I can’t really do this if you’re _crying _.”__

She reached up, cupping his cheek in her palm. “No, it’s all right. This is- this is nice. Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me. Don’t, just don’t—” And though his body hadn’t quite moved to do it yet, she could feel him pulling away. She clutched at his biceps, digging in with her nails and her will. But she couldn’t stop crying. 

“It’s just-it’s just that I forgot.” She sobbed quietly, joy buried in it, struggling to the surface. “I forgot. How could I have forgotten?”

“Forgot what?” he whispered. There was something tiny and terrified in his voice. His arms, holding himself above her, started to tremble. “What have you forgotten?” 

She looked into eyes that were different, but this time she could see all the way inside. _Who you are_ , she answered. He gasped. She smiled

“More,” she said. “Harder.” 

 

“We’re too bony for this.”

“Stop. Stop. Oh god, this isn’t going to work.” 

“Wait, maybe if I— Gah! It’s like trying to rub wet sticks together to make fire. Ow. Ow. Ow! Abort! Abort!”

Sarah collapsed onto the bed laughing so hard she could barely breathe.

 

“It’s like…all right.” He put and arm around her and wriggled closer in anticipation of whatever supposition he was about to make. “Suppose you have a friend, a close friend. You share drinks and laughs and maybe passionate overwrought conversations about, oh I don’t know, Gloria Steinem or something—”

“Yes, because the feminist manifesto decrees that every conversation must include at least one mention of Gloria Steinem.”

“Fine, Camille Paglia, Andrea Dworkin, you pick.” She groaned and rolled her eyes. “Point is you think you know this person based on the drinks and the laughs and the conversations, and then one day she lets slip that she was, I dunno, raped and tortured in a Columbian prison. Suddenly, an event that happened to her ages ago, now colors every interaction between you from that moment forward.”

“Is that what happened to you?”

“You don’t actually expect me to remember how many prisons I’ve been tortured in, do you?”

“Have you ever been raped?” 

“Erm… Possibly. Maybe. Sort of. Doesn’t matter. You’re missing the point. And we’re not talking about me.”

“Of course we’re not”

“ _Point_. It could be any tragedy sufficient in scale. Could be her parents were murdered in front of her when she was child, and the killer was never caught. Could be she was married to a serial killer for twenty years and never even suspected. Maybe she committed acts of genocide against her own race. Or she shot a man in Reno just to watch him die. Point is, after that revelation, nothing is the same between you. You can’t laugh and make jokes and get all passionate about the things you used to get passionate about, not without this gargantuan horror crowding the space between you. It alters your perception of that person irrevocably.” He pulled her even closer, squeezing her tight to his chest so hard she heard vertebrae pop. “They never see you the same way again,” he said very quietly. “They can’t. It’s impossible. Because every time they look at you they’re trying to see the scars under the surface of the skin. And every time you laugh, they’re listening for the pain beneath it, even when there isn’t any— what?”

She squirmed enough for him to ease up on his grip, and noted, “Significant pronoun shift. You might want to be aware of that since you’re not talking about you.. Also, I think _you’re_ missing the point. About friends.” 

“Oh, am I?”

“ _Yes_. A good friend, given time, will stop seeing scars under the skin, and pain underneath sparkling wit because all that pain, all those scars, those are part and parcel of the whole person that is her friend. It’s like a cicatrice. We stop looking and just… _see_. Our friend.” 

Silence. Then, “I have a strawberry mark shaped like witch’s hat on my right hip.”

“If you did, it rubbed off.”

“Damn it!” Pause. “Is there any pizza left?” 

 

“Come with me!” 

She awoke in the air, mid bounce, stomach fluttering like she was on a funpark ride, heart pounding and the bile rising to her throat.  
As soon as she’d stopped bouncing, she grabbed a fistful of pillow and started beating him with it. “You shit! You sodding bastard! Don’t you ever sleep?” 

“Hee, hee,” he said, ducking and dodging. “You know what I say about sleep.” Bounce, bounce, bounce. 

“Whatever it is, if you say it, I swear to god I will beat you with your shoes.” She flung herself onto her back, and jerked the sheets over her bruised and sticky body. “Stop jumping on my bed. It’s suffered enough.” 

“Not until you say you’ll come with me.” He crawled across the bed. “Come on, come on, Sarah Jane Smith, you know you wanna.” 

“You are such a child.”

“A child who’s had lots and lots of sex. Pretend I never said that.”

“Gladly. Oh god, my head. Tell me there’s coffee”

“I’ll make some.” He leapt off the bed with the same sort of bound that got him on it. 

 

“You’re coming with me, right?”

“No. Same reason as before.”

“The reason before was that I didn’t need you, and now I do.”

“Doctor,” she began. She wanted to add something like sweetheart or darling because she did love him very much and that hadn’t changed at all, and she wanted to impress that upon him before letting him down. But none of the words seemed appropriate and she thought it likely they’d never stick to his slippery surface anyway. “Doctor,” she began again— 

_I can’t go with you. I think maybe I don’t want to, but that’s not the reason I can’t. I still have a lot of work to do here, and my life’s half over as it is. You can save us from monsters, but we’ve really got to get busy if we’re going to save us from ourselves. So go out and find yourself a nice twenty-year old with great tits and energy to spare who can—_

“I committed genocide,” he blurted out, right there over his coffee. And her world stopped turning for the tiniest fraction of a second. 

“I didn’t mean for it to come out quite like that.”

 

Sarah Jane breathed into her center, stillness in the center. _In. Out_ side, birds were greeting the sun, _and in_ side a man was turning a spoon in a cup, round and round _and out_ bright, cold, morning _and in_ hot cup of coffee. 

“There was a war,” he said. “And I’m going to tell you the story, even though you might not be able to hold it in your head. Not because it’s a small head, although it is but only because you’re still evolving.” He smiled gently, so that she’d know he really did love her very much and that hadn’t changed at all, and he wanted to impress that upon her before—

“Just let me get my tape recorder,” she said.


End file.
